A few recent SCA workshops

If you’ve seen my Instagram feed, you’ve already seen some of the results of some of the recent workshops I took through the SCA group I’m a part of.

For one of the November Fight Practices, the current Queen, Kora Kendal came down and taught a preview of her workshop on how to make a 14th century sleeveless chemise. This was based on her research for a project she did to compete in Kingdom A&S a few years ago.

14th century sleeveless chemise in miniature from a workshop in November.

Then at Borealis Yule, I took the Basic Pyrography class taught by Ragnarr. I first took a pyrography class LAST Yule, and a few months later bought myself my own burner… this meant rather than looking for a total introduction, I was keen to have the chance to ask the instructor some specific questions to improve what I’ve been doing.

Mostly I focused on shading in this class. Ragnarr provided a grid on some wood for us to practice lines and curves, but I spent most of the class practicing various shading techniques. While I’ve been using the flow tip, he suggested the sprew(sp?) tip, which is kind of like the calligraphy tip, just smaller and with less angle. I also tried the calligraphy tip and didn’t like it much at all.

I also asked him about his thoughts on period-appropriate stains and finishes, though I’ll still need to look at a lot more research in that area.

Finally he had little wooden ornament blanks, and I burned a Viking-style boar’s head into each side of mine – though I didn’t have enough time to do the shading – I needed time for my burner to cool off before my friend picked me up for the hour-long drive back to his place.

Shading sampler and the beginning of a small wood burned ornament.

I also took Mrs Aebhlin fra Skye’s Period Fibre class – and got the chance to feel a bunch of different fibers – and gush with her over our mutual love of Gotland fleece. Yummy, squishy Gotland!

Leather ornament and sample pieces made at Borealis Yule 2018

Finally, I took a class with Lady Quinn on Leather Carving. Ages ago I tried some leather stamping and was very, very, very unsatisfied with the results. I didn’t feel like I really GOT it… so this class was great to get a better introduction to the techniques and tools. She had some leather blanks for us to practice with to start, along with some special plastic-y tracing paper. She also had a cutter and some shading/stamping/background tools for us to use as well. We practiced a bit – figuring out how wet to make our veg-tanned leather for cutting vs stamping – and finally moved on to a small round with a design for an ornament.

I don’t totally feel confident with my shading – but the cutting I felt pretty confident with. I can see this being an interesting craft – but I know how expensive it is to get into (so many different tools…) so right now is NOT a time I’ll be pursuing it.

Want to see what else I’m making?

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See more of my pyrography projects by clicking the content tag: Pyrography.